


The New Girl

by FluffyLlamacorn



Series: Taken By a Demon [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Modern Setting, Slice of Life, i hope all the oc character's tag names will work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-06-24 01:37:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15619623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyLlamacorn/pseuds/FluffyLlamacorn
Summary: Shizuka moves to a new town and worries a lot about how things might go wrong before taking a leap of faith. Diana is excited to make a new friend.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the same story I've started uploading on Wattpad, crossposted for backup. Once this catches up, they will be updated at the same time. For now, you can read ahead at https://www.wattpad.com/story/154870270-taken-by-a-demon if you should desire to do so.

Once upon a time there was a forest. In it, life flourished. Plants grew and animals lived. Humans found the forest and built a town on the outside, but the forest grew faster than the town and soon it was enveloped.

In the town inside the forest, life was good. There was a school and a convenience store or two. You could get what you needed and if you wanted anything you couldn’t get, it wasn’t too far from larger cities. Even the capital of the country was only a couple of hours away by car.

But more importantly, people were nice. Friendship flowed and most inhabitants felt a sense of belonging. It was the sort of town that families lived in for generations and even if children left as they grew up, many came back once it was time to start their own family. Most families in town could trace their life there back many generations.

And when new people came to town, they were welcomed with open arms. Coming from a different town with much less love, that sort of welcome can be hard to trust, but learning to trust can be an adventure all on its own.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Shizuka goes to explore her new town for the first time, she doesn't quite know where she's going, but luckily runs into some helpful guides.

A black haired girl stood outside her front door and shook her head again at the guy in the door case. "It'll be alright, Kichi. Stop worrying." She gave him a cautious smile as she stood there with her hands in the pockets of her cardigan. They were halfway through October and while it was still not cold enough for jackets and scarves, it was chilly enough that she needed another layer.

 

"Yeah, but…" her older brother started. He was around a head taller than her and looked down at her with worry in his frown. They had just moved to a new town and she wanted to go exploring on her own a bit. He was against the idea for multiple reasons. "I just don't want you to get lost or anything, Shizuka."

 

"It's not that big a town, I'll be fine,” Shizuka reassured him, sending him what she hoped was a convincing smile for an extra measure. “I just want to check out the park. It's like… two streets away,” she said, pointing to the right which she desperately hoped was the right direction before looking back at him and sighing. “And I need a break from unpacking, you know." She had spent most of the day carrying boxes from the entrance to their designated rooms and many hundreds of other small tasks before she finally got to work on her own room.

 

"Yeah, because you did a great job of that. How much did you get done there?" her brother asked her, cocking his head to the side and sending her a smirk.

 

“Enough,” Shizuka said, looking away defiantly with a pout. She had only finished a single of her own boxes before she suddenly got an overwhelming need to get out of the house and look around and it suddenly wasn’t fun to convince him of the validity of her idea anymore. “Look, I’ve got my phone on me and I’ll be back soon enough,” she told him, looking back into his eyes and deciding the topic for both of them. “I’ll call if I change my plans.” Then she laughed a single “heh” under her breath and her frown turned into a smile as she remembered an old, weird joke. “Besides, I’ve got my invisible friend to help me out if anything should happen.” With that she turned around, walked out of their front yard and turned left down the main road, leaving her brother feeling vaguely annoyed at how often she used that joke like it concluded everything.

 

***

 

…

 

Yup.

 

She was lost.

 

It was always annoyingly hard to keep the moral high ground during an argument with her brother when he had a point. Still doable, but hard.

 

Shizuka took another look around the street just to be completely sure she was absolutely lost and found that she was undoubtedly extremely far away from the road she was supposed to have taken. She had probably turned left too early and ended up making the situation worse when she tried to fix it…  Now she was standing at a t-cross with no street signs or land marks to point her in the right direction. There were a number of private houses around, but asking them for help would have been out of the question even if there had been any light in there. That’s just not done. On top of that, there was no one around on the street or in their gardens, the weather being too grey and cold for a trip without purpose. She would have liked to ask google maps, but had forgotten to charge her phone like a dummy. It barely had battery left and she needed to conserve it so her family could get in touch with her if necessary, especially if she was going to keep being lost. As such, her only option was to… walk around aimlessly some more?

 

Just as she was thinking that, Shizuka noticed three teenagers around her age walk down the street towards her. A girl and two boys, all white. Well, one of the boys seemed darker than the two others, but it was hard to tell specifics at a distance. Seeing any shades of brown honestly surprised Shizuka, who had not been expecting much from a small town in the middle of the Danish country side in the race department. The girl and paler boy both had long auburn hair and were visibly related, even at a distance. The sister had hair going to her waist while her brother had it pulled back in a ponytail. The sister seemed chubby, though her loose clothes could also have helped in that impression. Her brother was smaller and he also seemed to have a more... girly build than most, though the other boy may have influenced that comparison. The darker boy seemed extremely muscular even through his many layers and was generally bigger than the siblings. His brown hair spiked around in a way that was obviously intentional and left no doubt that he spent a lot of time on it. Shizuka was pretty sure parts of the hair was dyed different shades as well, but it was hard to tell.

 

And to get any clue about where she was, Shizuka would have to talk to them. Could she?

 

They were getting closer. Shizuka went out in the middle of the sidewalk, head lifted, ready to face them.

 

They were some of meters away, when they started laughing. Shizuka shrank back. She could just walk around confused some more, it wasn’t a problem at all.

 

But, no, she couldn’t accept giving up so easily and tried to work her courage up again. But then she noticed that her shoes were _incredibly_ fascinating and- No. Get your act together, Shizuka. Give it one more go. So she looked up, ready to speak, and quickly looked away again. The teenagers were close by then, only a couple of steps away. Their conversation had stopped and Shizuka could feel them looking at her. She turned away completely, face blushing a lot more than she liked. She must have looked ridiculous. She could understand their staring. She herself was staring intently at a random house, pretending interest in the façade through a heavy blush when she heard a voice.

 

"Hi? You alright?"

 

It took Shizuka a couple of moments to realize that the voice was talking to her. Heh. Someone on the outside caring about her, even if just for a moment. That was a new feeling.

 

"I don't think I've seen you before and I remember most people," the girl went on with both curiosity and worry obvious in her tone, "Are you new?"

 

Shizuka managed to turn around, cheeks still blushing furiously, and found they had stopped walking completely. "Y-Yeah, we just moved here…" Great, not only did her skin mark her as an outsider, so did her actions.

 

"Oh, really? Do you need help getting around town?" the girl offered with an excited smile. Shizuka knew the girl didn’t expect her to say yes, but somehow got the feeling she would not let her down if she wanted her to do it.

 

"Oh! Name's Diana, by the way," the girl said with a huge smile when Shizuka stayed quiet for far too long a moment. "This is my twin brother, Dylan and our friend Stan," she continued, confirming Shizuka’s assumptions.  "And you?"

 

"I-I'm Shizuka," Shizuka stuttered with a fight. She didn't say any more than that and let the conversation fall flat. She really wanted to get away and was itching for an excuse but it would just be too rude if she left and she couldn’t think of anything. A couple of moments passed in awkward silence.  Shizuka tried to withdraw to within herself as much as physically possible, back crouched, shoulders up, arm in front of her and face, hidden behind her bangs, turned down to stare intensely at the pavement. She was really just hoping the friends would lose interest and leave her behind. It suddenly didn’t matter that she was lost, she just needed to get away.

 

"So… Do you?" the girl, Diana, said when she realized Shizuka wasn’t going to answer without further prompting.

 

"… Huh?" Shizuka looked up and back at her as her shoulders went down. She had completely forgotten the question was.

 

"Need a tour guide or anything," Diana said with a shrug. Then she grinned. "Don't worry. I _rarely_ bite."

 

"Oh, I don't know if I agree about that," the unrelated boy, Stan, if Shizuka remembered correctly, said with an amused tone. "I think Matilda would like to disagree with you on that."

 

"That was an exception!” Diana objected, quickly on the defense. She turned immediately to face him, finger and voice raised. “She started and it was a bite or be bitten situation."

 

"Still," Stan continued calmly with a smirk.

 

"I said _rarely_. Once isn't enough to change that," Diana crossed her arms defiantly.

 

"Well, it's not like that was the first time," Diana's brother injected.

 

"What're you talking about?" Diana asked, honestly confused.

 

"Cousin Lulu."

 

"I was _five_! That doesn't count!" Diana yelled dramatically.

 

It was official. Shizuka might hear voices in her head, but these guys were crazy. A nice kind of crazy, but not nice enough to mean more than the crazy. Shizuka wanted even more to leave, but didn’t have time to slither away before she was drawn into the conversation again.

 

"And guys, c'mon! You're scaring Sjisuka away," Diana said, mispronouncing Shizuka’s name and turning away from her friends with a dramatic head motion that made her long hair flutter.

 

"Technically-" Dylan was about to point out, humor in his voice.

 

"It's you guys," Diana said in a tone that allowed no objections. "So what do you think?" she asked Shizuka in a jarringly happy tone, the annoyance from moments before gone completely. It was jarring, yes, but it did feel completely genuine. She was annoyed with her friends, but in no way with Shizuka. And actually, she might have been smiling while arguing with her friends? She was just… having fun in a very different way than Shizuka was used to.

 

"Well…" Shizuka not only really did need help getting around, she also wanted to be more social. She wanted a new chance at having friends. That was one of the reasons she had been so happy to move. But… It was so much and so suddenly and Diana seemed so… So hyper and out of control. Still… "Yeah." Shizuka nodded slowly, deciding as she said her words. "I'd like that." A slight smile found its way to her lips, a hope for the future, a gamble on good intentions. That was one thing that Diana seemed to have plenty of.

 

Diana's face lit up like this was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

 

As she walked over to Shizuka, her brother poked playfully at her, "What, you don't like us anymore?"

 

"Nope!" Diana exclaimed with the same happiness in her voice as on her face.

 

***

 

After saying goodbye to her boys, Diana had to wait for Sjisuka to call someone. While she would have liked to listen to what they might be talking about, it became impossible when Sjisuka started talking quickly in some Asian language Diana did not speak. Instead Diana spent the time inspecting her new friend in more detail. The first thing Diana had noticed about her was that Sjisuka was obviously Asian (of Asian decent?), though Diana had no idea what country she might be from. Her straight, black hair was a bit shorter than shoulder length and her bangs were only a bit shorter than the rest of her hair. Most of them framed her face, but a good chunk of them covered it instead and while it didn’t seem to hinder her vision, it was already obvious to Diana from their so far short encounter that she kept them specifically to be able to hide behind them.

 

Sjisuka’s face seemed young, but at the same time like it hid far too much experience. It might just be that Diana couldn’t tell age very well with Asians, but she still couldn’t help but worry what sort of experience might leave that mark. She wore a black cardigan that seemed as warm as Diana’s hoodie, but it had a cool symbol on the left side of the chest. It looked like a star inside a circle in a light blue color, which was matched by stripes on the sleeves and edges. The effect was nice, but a bit too complicated for Diana's taste in clothes.

 

"So, where do you wanna go?" Diana asked when Sjisuka got off the phone. "And who was that?" She couldn't help but spy.

 

"I was on the way to the park, when I got lost. And, uh, that was my brother," Sjisuka explained as she put her phone back in a pocket.

 

"The park it is!" Diana said overenthusiastically and pointed the way she had come from. "Let's go!" After a few steps, she continued, "Are you close?"

 

"Huh? Oh, not really,” Sjisuka thought about the question as they walked. “Well, we're not _not_ close, you know, but we're not _extremely_ close. It's just… He's the one who took charge during the move."

 

"Took charge?" Diana urged.

 

"Dad can get distracted really easily. And he's been really nervous about what might happen. I'm not all that good at calming him down, when he gets like that, so Kichi, ah, Kichirou, was the one to stand up, tell him to calm down and take care of the last couple of things. He was on my case about that I shouldn't just go around town the first couple of days all alone, so I figured he should know I hadn't gotten lost or anything."

 

Diana nodded approvingly. "Cool." She waited for a moment before letting her most pressing question fly out of her mouth. “So where do you come from?”

 

Sjisuka looked her in the eye before answering for- Not for long, but definitely for longer than expected. “I’m from Birkerød, but, ah, my family is from Japan.”

 

“Oh.” Diana said, feeling more than a little stupid. “Right. Yeah, that’s… I knew that could be a thing. Sorry.” Sjisuka’s lack of accent should maybe have given that away?

 

They walked in silence for a bit. Diana didn't mind and quickly left her embarrassed feeling behind, but Shizuka couldn't help but feel it was awkward. She was walking around a new town with a girl she'd only just met and they couldn't even find anything to talk about. She wanted to start a conversation, but nothing came to mind. She didn't want to offend Diana with her questions and she didn't know enough about her to find a safe subject and that meant she couldn't find an opening and find a safe subject. She considered if she should correct Diana’s pronunciation of her name, but it might have been a one time fluke and how would she bring it up without being rude anyway? It was obvious Diana didn’t really know how to talk about that kind of stuff and she didn’t want to antagonize her with lectures while she was doing her a favor. Her thoughts swiveled around in her head and she didn't pay attention to anything. Her legs were going on autopilot, keeping Diana in sight three steps in front of her. She was just about to stop up and run away from the awkwardness, when Diana turned around with a smile and pointed.

 

"It's down there," Diana said, pointing down a large road.

 

For a moment Shizuka was completely lost, but she quickly realized that Diana was talking about the park. She nodded.

 

As Diana led her down the road, she slowed slightly down to walk beside Shizuka instead of a couple of steps in front of her. "What do you think of the town?" she asked.

 

"It's… Nice." It was only her third day there, so she didn't have much to judge. The main thing she had had time to notice was the fact that she wasn't surrounded by her old classmates. And, well, "nice" was a major understatement of how that felt.

 

"When did you move here?"

 

"The day before yesterday."

 

"Woah, the day we got autumn break. Wasn't that, like… stressing?" Diana asked. Then a thought struck her. "Ha, did you get to leave school early?"

 

Shizuka smiled. "I didn't ask for it." Truth be told, she didn't want it. While she had hated going there, she wanted to end it on her terms. It had been hard, but the knowledge that she wouldn't have to see any of them again when the day was done made it so much easier to say goodbye and walk out with her head held high. If she had just slowly slithered away… It would also have been nice, but she wouldn't have gotten that sense of accomplishment.

 

"Yeah, I suppose it would be nice to have that last day with the friends…" Shizuka couldn't help but smile a grim smile at how wrong Diana was. Diana was lucky if that was the way she thought of school. A place with friends. Another thought suddenly showed up and interrupted everything. That was the school Shizuka would be going to after the vacation. Her smile grew tenfold and lost the bitterness as she looked away to avoid questions.

 

She didn't need to bother. Just as Shizuka was convinced she'd turned far enough away, Diana motioned to her. "I live over there," she said, pointing to a two story house on the opposite side of the road. It wasn't huge, but it seemed like it could hold a normal family and have some extra space. Then she pointed to the house on the left of it. "And Stan's our neighbor." His house was slightly larger, at the cost of having a slightly smaller garden. There was technically a small fence between the two gardens, but something about it seemed like no one took it seriously. Shizuka smiled. The two houses just screamed of happy childhoods and nostalgia.

 

The entrance to the park was a couple of hundred meters down the road from Diana's house. Diana showed her around the park and made sure to tell her all the secret passageways. It was, for example, actually possible to go through the shrubbery to Stan's garden, but very uncomfortable once you reached a certain size. The trio had generally stopped using that way, except when speed was really important, and it was now mainly used by Stan's many younger siblings.

 

There were a great many stories like that and by the time they were half way through them, it was getting dark. Shizuka vaguely remembered her brother telling her not to stay out after dark while they were still unpacking and excused herself. Diana wanted to help her back, but Shizuka convinced her that she knew how to get home. The fact that she _did_ know the way home was not the greatest intensive, though. That was the fact that Kichi had already expressed a want to meet Diana during the phone call earlier and wouldn't let her go before all things were checked. And while it was very sweet of him that he didn't want her to go through the same kind of thing as she did at her last school, it got annoying in the long run.

 

She got home about fifteen minutes later and found that her dad had insisted on saving some food for her. Kichi had felt that she should call if she was planning on not coming home for dinner, but had been vetoed. After a hug for her dad and a long explanation for her brother, she ate her dinner in peace. It was late when she finally entered her room again. The first thing she did was crash down on her bed with a huge smile on the face.

 

"I think I'm going to like it here," she said to the empty room.

_I think you're right,_ a voice inside her head happily agreed.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana spends the day with her boys and meets Shizuka's family. Shizuka stays at home and finally unpacks her room.

It was around ten the day after she had met Sjisuka and Diana was eating her breakfast at the table in the middle of their kitchen when Dylan entered the room. The table was more designed for making food than eating it, but they had gotten some tall chairs because the twins were lazy as hell whenever possible and leaving the room would be far too much work in the weekend. Dylan went to the fridge before speaking, but didn’t bother finishing his search for breakfast before he started.

 

“Did you have fun ditching us yesterday?” He said with a tone that clearly indicated his joking state of mind.

 

Diana smirked. “Yeah, it was fun. Maybe I should do it more often.”

 

“Aww, really?” He looked away from the fridge to make sure she was joking along.

 

“Of course not, silly! Can’t you take a joke?” she laughed.

 

“Only when I don’t get worried.” He turned back to the fridge, before continuing. “I don’t want to lose you, you know.” While his tone had been light before, it suddenly turned serious.

 

“I’m sure I can convince the teacher that I can work with you guys, if you want,” Diana said without much intensity. They had been assigned a large task in Danish right before the vacation and the teacher had if not forced, then urged Diana to join a different group than her boys. This wasn’t all that bad in its own: She liked her classmates and got fantastically along with almost all of them. So, of course, she had been forced to join the only two people she could imagine not wanting to work with: Belinda and Danielle. Diana really didn’t like how they tried to build themselves up by tearing other people down and generally tried to ignore their existence.

 

“I mean in general.” He left the fridge, taking some bread and some toppings with him. “We’re growing older. We’re gonna get different hobbies and different friends. I don’t want to lose us.”

 

“Dylan,” Diana said, getting up from her seat and looking her brother straight in the eyes, “We’re twins. We’re _always_ going to be together. And I _promise_. I’m _not_ gonna get _any_ friends who will cut the two of us apart.”

 

Dylan frowned for a moment before answering. “I want to keep _us_ , but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to evolve. I’m glad you feel the same way, but don’t take it too far, sis.” He sat down next to his sister’s seat. “So! What are your plans for today?”

 

Diana sat down again. “I dunno. Walk around town or something.” She shrugged. “You?”

 

“Pretty much the same. I think The Caboodle’s getting new stocks today.” The Caboodle was a local shop. It sold a little bit of pretty much everything, but the twins mainly went there for the ice cream.

 

Diana nodded. “That sounds like a plan.”

 

They ate breakfast in the comfortable silence that occurs when friends run out of things to talk about, the one where smiles tell so much that there’s no need for words.

 

***

 

Shizuka’s start of the day was slightly less comfortable than Diana’s. Kichirou was still pissed that she had come home so late and while their father had managed to quell Kichi’s anger, he had also told Shizuka that since she had been out for so long, she would have to finish unpacking her boxes in one day. They had to return the boxes they had borrowed and a lot of the borrowed boxes had been used for Shizuka’s stuff. It would also be nice to live in a place that wasn’t filled with boxes so she had easily agreed to it. She got a bit annoyed when her dad and brother decided to go shopping for necessities without her, but Kichi had pointed out that she had already had her day in town and her father reminded her that they had to return those boxes soon. Begrudgingly, Shizuka accepted.

 

After waving goodbye to them by the front door, Shizuka went up to her room.  Her house was a two story house like Diana’s, but smaller and more rectangular. Her room was on the second floor, overlooking the road. Like the house, Shizuka’s room was rectangular and not all that big. She had a desk, a bed, a couple of bookcases and a whole lot of moving boxes. Going over to the desk, she could look out through the huge window. Her dad and brother had walked halfway down the street, but she could still see them from her window.

 

But it was time to get to work. She found her iPod, turned the volume up to surround her and started making the room into _her_ room.

 

***

 

The Caboodle’s owner was a woman in her late thirties. Some years ago she had been a teacher, working at the local school. That’s where the trio first met her. She had been their homeroom teacher from fourth to sixth grade. Despite not working at the school anymore, she still kept an eye at her old class and knew what they were up to. The shop was on the way home from school for the trio and they would usually stop by every day. They didn’t always buy anything, but it was a nice place to hang out before going home.

 

Having nothing to do, the trio had decided to head for The Caboodle. About halfway there, they’d gotten distracted by a bird flying around in the sky. There wasn’t anything special about it – tons of birds just like it flew around the city every day – but their conversation had made them look up at one point and it had been flying just in front of the sun at that time. Obviously, it was a sign that they couldn’t just look away.

 

Luckily for them, the bird flew towards The Caboodle. The trio followed, coming up with conspiracy theories about what it was and why they didn’t just ignore it. Finally it landed on the store’s sign. But… Diana frowned. For the first time in a long time, she realized that she didn’t understand the symbols on the sign or what they had to do with anything. For once she actually studied the sign on the roof.  Were they maybe a sort of runes or something? Or maybe some kind of alchemist symbols? Wait… Wasn’t there something familiar about that star?

 

“Are you coming, Diana?”

 

Her brother’s call snapped her out of it. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m coming.” She looked back up at the sign, but couldn’t find anything suspicious again. What had she been considering?

 

Entering the store, Stan called out for their old teacher. “Hi, Klara.”

 

Over by the vegetables, the store’s owner straightened her back. She looked over at the trio and smiled. “Hi, guys.” She had dull brown hair in a slightly long page cut, which framed her wide head. Her light brown eyes were half closed and considered the trio with a fond look.

 

“You look tired,” Diana blurted out before thinking. Then she caught herself. “Oh, um, sorry. I didn’t mean it like that,” she corrected herself sheepishly. She didn’t _intend_ to be rude, it just sorta happened sometimes. But Klara _did_ look tired. She’d had slight wrinkles for a couple of year, but they were very noticeable today.

 

Klara just laughed. “You’re right, I haven’t been sleeping enough. I’ve been doing a lot of paperwork lately.” She smiled at them. “You’re lucky. You don’t have to worry about that sort of things the next many years. You’re still just kids.” Had any other adult said that, they would probably have objected – or tried to – but Klara had known them since they _were_ kids and the trio understood why she still saw them as small children instead of the young adults they felt they had become.

 

“What kind of paperwork?” Dylan asked interested.

 

“Just taxes, nothing important,” Klara quickly shrugged off.

 

The twins frowned and looked at each other. “Weren’t taxes due sometime in the summer?” Dylan asked.

 

“Yeah, the old ones had problems with getting it done on time,” Diana confirmed. She didn’t add how loud those problems had been. He knew that.

 

“Your parents don’t have a shop,” Klara explained. “I had to take care of some extra stuff because of that. But don’t worry too much about it. I’m almost done. I was just putting my new shipments in place.”

 

“Can we help?” Stan suggested.

 

“That’s very sweet, but you _know_ I don’t have enough of a profit to pay you properly.”

 

“Free ice cream?” Diana suggested with an impish grin.

 

***

 

Klara had gotten a huge shipment of everything for the vacation. It was by no means the first time the trio helped her stock the store, but it was definitely one of the biggest loads they had to stock with several pallets worth of stock left by the time they got started. The trio created a home base in the backroom where two of them were dividing the goods into boxes based on where in the shop they belonged with the third one going back and forth between the backroom and the proper shop. They took turns between carrying and organizing as Stan had long ago accepted that the relatively scrawny twins didn’t allow him to do all of the carrying.

 

After a couple of rounds Stan came back into the backroom with news. “There are customers.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” came the answer from one of the twins, busy remembering where the plastic spoons belonged. “Who?”

 

“That’s the thing,” Stan explained as he put the empty box down. “I’ve never seen them before.”

 

Diana looked up from her spoons. “Think they’re related to Sjisuka?”

 

Stan shrugged. “Probably, yeah. Black hair and they looked Asian, and not the middle eastern kind.”

 

Dylan slowly got up and stretched. It was his turn to go to the store after Stan. “I’ll keep my ears open for more clues.”

 

“Does Shisuka have a brother?” Stan asked as Dylan left the room with a new box.

 

“Yeah,” Diana confirmed.

 

“How old?”

 

“No clue. Probably older than her.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

Diana and Stan worked quickly at organizing the goods. Frozen food in one box, comics and toys in a second, snacks and candy in a third. They were old hands at it and had time to crack jokes while working.

 

Dylan returned with an empty box. “They were talking with Klara about where to find stuff and seemed new. I think they mentioned a sister a couple of times,” he reported.

 

“So, what, 99% chance they have something to do with Sjisuka?” Diana asked, while scanning the boxes to a response of “Yeah, probably”. Dylan had taken the box with soft drinks and other such things, so that one was out of the question. Not that she had been hoping for it or anything. She could easily carry it and her pride forbade her not to if challenged, but when there were lighter possibilities and her laziness won out, why should she?  Deciding that the box with comics and toys was almost completely filled, she lifted it up.

 

“Well, I’m gonna go erase that last percent,” she said as she got to her feet. “Have fun, guys,” was called over her shoulder as she disappeared into the front room.

 

The door to the back room was located in the far-left corner of the room, behind the counter and the comics were in the front of the store, also on the left side. The store was very small and only had three aisles: A left aisle, the direct way to the comics, in Klara was talking with the customers, a center in the aisle and a right aisle. Diana decided to take the right aisle to make sure she wouldn’t disturb the conversation.

 

That didn’t work. “We’re not in the way, are we, Diana?” Klara asked as Diana reached the comics next to them.

 

“Eh? Oh, uh, no, of course not,” Diana said, waving to send their attention away again. They quickly resumed their conversation as she started putting comics in place.

 

The little break in their conversation had been useful for Diana, though. She had managed to get a pretty good look at the customers. They were two men, one in his very late teens and the other in his forties. Both had black hair and while Diana couldn’t pretend to be an expert, she could easily buy them as Japanese. It was more than their skin color that made them look like Sjisuka, though, there was something about the shape of the nose or maybe the set of the mouths as well. Or maybe those were the traits that simply labeled them as Asian and Diana just didn’t have enough experience to tell them further apart. She couldn’t deny that she probably wouldn’t be able to tell if Sjisuka had been adopted by Japanese people who she wasn’t biologically related to.

 

Just as Diana finished placing comics, the young man came over to her. “Excuse me, could you help me find something?” He looked like he was three, maybe four years older than Diana and was probably about to finish high school.

 

“Of course,” Diana said with a smile.

 

“Where’s the stationary?”

 

Diana pointed to the shelves on the opposite wall to direct him and explained with a smile.

 

The young man turned halfway to look where she was pointing. “Ah, thanks.”

 

“Are you Sjisuka’s brother?” she asked before he had time to walk away.

 

He froze up. After a moment, he slowly turned to look at her, revealing his face to her a little bit at a time. “How… do you know my sister’s name?” He looked… frightened, but in a pissed off way.

 

Diana smiled in what she hoped was a pleasant manner. “I’m Diana. I hung out with her yesterday.”

 

By the time Sjisuka’s brother was completely facing Diana, he was wearing the Big Brother look. It was the most desperate sort of anger, intending to protect the most innocent and helpless little creature in existence. She had seen Stan have it lots of times. The few times Dylan had tried to use it, she had reminded him they were twins and told him to shut up. “If you hurt her,” he started.

 

“ _Hurt_ her?” Diana interrupted, gasped, every fiber of her rejecting the idea. “She is my _friend_. Why should I _hurt_ her?”

 

“Kichi? Did you find anything?” the other customer called from the other end of the store.

 

“Yeah, in a moment, dad,” Kichi called back. He looked at Diana one more time, a cold and guarded look still in his face, but not the direct anger of just before. “She has been awfully bad at choosing friends before.” With that line he turned away, leaving Diana to her anger.

 

***

 

“Yup,” Diana confirmed as she stomped into the backroom again, her box empty and both her missions accomplished. “That’s who they were.” She walked over to the boys and plumbed defiantly down next to the boys.

 

For a moment nobody said anything. Dylan and Stan had paused their sorting to look up when Diana arrived and were now looking at her with a mix of concern, wonder and amusement.

 

“What?” she spat. But she knew why they were looking. Even if she thought she had gotten her anger under control, she knew better than to think she could hide anything from her boys. “I like Sjisuka better.”

 

***

 

“I met Diana,” Kichi told Shizuka as he fished a couple of coat hangers out of an anonymous plastic bag.

 

Shizuka immediately took this as bad news. “Oh god. What did you do?”

 

The only answer she got was a grunt as Kichi kept working, pulling a screwdriver up of the bag.

 

“Kichi!” Shizuka insisted.

 

“I don’t want you to go through that again, Shizuka!” he snapped, hand on a roll of plastic bags.

 

“And having a psycho big brother is going to help me _how_?”

 

“I’m not a psycho!” Kichi yelled back.

 

“You sure act like one sometimes!”

 

Kichi got ready to yell something back, but when he drew in air, all that came out was a sigh. “Sis-” he began in a more normal volume of voice, a tired voice filled with concern and worry.

 

“I _know_ , okay? I know you just want what’s best for me, but _please_ ,” Shizuka implored. “Let me do this on my own. I might actually have a chance to make real friends here.”

 

“And that’s why I don’t want you to screw up, Shizuka,” Kichi said, finally pulling away from the shopping bag. “You got a second chance. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get a third.”

 

“If everyone’s like Diana, the only reason I’ll need one is if you scare them all off with your overprotective big brother routine,” Shizuka pouted. “You need to trust my judgment more.”

 

This actually seemed to hit. Kichi broke their eye contact to consider. “So do you.”

 

“That’s not what we’re discussing,” Shizuka complained, crossing her arms with a huff.

 

“No, I’m changing the subject to cover my ass,” Kichi said with a single laugh. “It’s a thing brothers do when they don’t want to admit their sisters are right.”

 

Shizuka smiled as she looked back at him.


End file.
